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John Dalton
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![]() A Famous Lecture Theatre This picture shows the Lecture Theatre of the Royal Institution (London). Many of our heroes of Science lectured here, including Davy, Dalton, Faraday, Tyndall and Huxley. In the picture Faraday is seen delivering a lecture before a distinguished audience. |
Dalton's impression of Edinburgh is very different: "It is worth while coming an hundred miles merely to see Edinburgh. It is the most romantic place and situation I ever saw; the houses touch the clouds. In this place they do not build houses side by side as with you; they build them one upon another. My own lodgings are up four flights of stairs from the front street, and five from the back. I have just one hundred steps to descend before I reach the real earth. To look down from my windows into the street at first made me shudder, but I am now got so familiar with the view that I can throw up the window and rest on the wall, taking care to keep one foot as far back in the room as I can to guard the centre of gravity."
Dalton never married. He lived for thirty years in the humble home of his friend, the Rev. William Johns, of Manchester. It is interesting to note how a chance observation led to so long a residence and lifelong friendship. The facts have been related by the clergyman's daughter: "As my mother was standing at her parlour window, one evening towards dusk, she saw Dr. Dalton passing on the other side of the street, and, on her opening the window, he crossed over and greeted her. 'Mr. Dalton,' said she, 'how is it that you so seldom come to see us?' 'Why, I don't know,' said he, 'but I have a mind to come and live with you.' My mother thought at first that he was in jest; but finding that he really meant what he said, she asked him to call again the next day, after she should have consulted my father. Accordingly he came and took possession of the only bedroom at liberty, which he continued to occupy for nearly thirty years. And here I may mention, to the honour of both, that throughout that long connection he and my father never on one occasion exchanged one angry word, and never ceased to feel for each other those sentiments of friendly interest which, on the decline into years of both, ripened into still warmer feelings of respect and affection."
Miss Johns gives also a description of Dalton's daily life. He spent practically the whole day in his laboratory, coming over for dinner, but always when it was nearly finished, which practice was doubtless to save spending too much time at meals. He would go over to his laboratory before breakfast and light the fire, and but for his meals he remained in the laboratory till nine o'clock in the evening. After supper they would all sit round the fire for a little while the clergyman and the chemist smoked their long pipes, but after that Dalton would study till midnight.
Although Dalton never married, he was by no means a woman-hater. In a letter to Mrs. Johns, writing from London, he says that he might have described the fashionable dresses of the ladies, but that he was too much taken up admiring their pretty faces. And in a letter to his brother, written on another occasion altogether, he acknowledges having fallen in love with a widow, upon whom he had called in connection with her son's studies at the Manchester College: "During my captivity, which lasted about a week, I lost my appetite, and had other symptoms of bondage about me, as incoherent discourse, etc., but have now happily regained my freedom."
In another confidential letter to his brother he goes into raptures over the charms of another young lady. Dalton used to say that he had had no time to marry, but there seems little doubt that it was because he could not well afford to set up house.
The name of our hero is prominent in connection with the subject of colour-blindness, which defect was known at one time as Daltonism. There is a story told of Dalton, while schoolmaster at Kendal, making the purchase of a pair of stockings as a present for his mother. Seeing the stockings in a shop-window labelled "Silk and Newest Fashion," he went in and bought a pair, thinking they would be something out of the ordinary for his mother, who, would doubtless wear home-knit hose of a heavier kind. The presentation pair of stockings proved to be more uncommon than John had anticipated. When his mother opened the parcel she said: "Thou hast bought me a pair of fine hose, John, but what made thee fancy such a bright colour? Why, I can never show myself at meeting in them." John thought there was something wrong with his mother's eyesight, as the stockings appeared to him to be of a dark bluish drab colour. When he expressed his surprise to his mother she exclaimed: "Why, they're as red as a cherry, John." But John called his brother Jonathan to decide the disputed point, and the latter agreed with his brother that their mother's vision was seriously at fault. She, not being satisfied with this double judgment, took the stockings to her neighbours, and came back with the general verdict, "Varra fine stuff, but uncommon scarlety."
The foregoing story is interesting, and I have no doubt is substantially correct, but it is stated as "the first event which opened John Dalton's eyes to the fact that his and his brother's vision was not as other men's." But this is evidently not so, for I find that in a paper which Dalton read to the Philosophical Society of Manchester, in 1794, he says: "I was never convinced of a peculiarity in my vision till I accidentally observed the colour of the flower Geranium zonate by candlelight in the autumn of 1792." From the date of this discovery we find that he was still at Kendal, which he left during the following year, so that the incident of the stockings was evidently prior to the discovery by candlelight. Contrary to the generally accepted idea, I can quite understand that the stocking incident did not convince Dalton that there was any peculiarity in his vision, he would think that it was merely the description of the colour that was at fault. Perhaps my point will be made clear by the following incident.
On one occasion when I was reading a paper relating to colour-blindness to a learned Society, an eminent Professor of Medicine asked me if I could explain a case which had come under his notice, in which he found a very intelligent gentleman of seventy years of age who had come through life quite ignorant of the fact that he was colour-blind. In reply I quoted a passage from Dalton's original paper, which I think makes the matter quite clear: "I was always of opinion, though I might not often mention it, that several colours were injudiciously named." And again: "When I used to call pink sky-blue and incur the ridicule of others, I used to join in the laugh myself, and then nobody thought I was in earnest; nor did I think at that time that there was such a great difference in the appearance of colour to me and others as there now seems there is. I thought we differed chiefly in words, and not ideas."
In one of Dalton's letters he tells how he had been at the house of a friend who was a dyer, when, besides his friend and himself, there were present the dyer's wife, a physician, and a young lady friend. The question of colour-vision was evidently raised, for the dyer's wife; brought in a piece of cloth to see how Dalton would describe it. He said that the last time he called upon them he was wearing a suit just of that colour, and that he should describe it as a reddish snuff-colour. This was quite a good joke to the rest of the party, as the cloth was of a grass-green colour, and certainly not the sort of colour that Quaker Dalton would wear. They told him he would not be allowed into the Meeting-house in such a green coat.
When Dalton was preparing to visit the French savants in Paris, he visited his tailor in Manchester, and ordered a suit of clothes to be made for the occasion. He took a look round among the pieces of different cloths and settled his choice upon one which he considered appropriate. Had his tailor fulfilled the order, the devout Quaker would have appeared among the learned men of France dressed in a complete suit of bright scarlet. However, the tailor, who was evidently aware of Dalton's so-called "Daltonism," pointed out to his client that this particular material was used only for making hunting coats. Dalton was so frank about his defective colour-vision that he must have received much good-humoured chaff on the subject. For instance, in reply to a letter written by Dalton, in which he had made inquiries concerning the colour-vision of a family, the following remark is made concerning our hero: "I find by your accounts you must have very imperfect ideas of the charms which in a great measure constitute beauty in the female sex: I mean that rosy blush of the cheeks which you so much admire for being light blue, I think a complexion nearly as exceptional in the fair sex as the sunburnt Moor's or the sable Ethiopian's, consequently (if real) a fitter object for a show than for a wife."
Dalton read more than one hundred scientific papers to the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester, of which he was President for many years. He used to make quaint remarks from the President's chair, being very fond of a sly joke. For instance, on one occasion when some one was reading a paper which was stupid and meaningless and was quite apparently a waste of the Society's time, Dalton remarked in a very audible whisper to the Secretaries who sat near him, "Well, this is a very interesting paper for those that take any interest in it."
Dalton was a great walker, proof of which we had in his forty-mile walk from his home to Kendal, a journey which he repeated often, preferring to walk at least a good bit of the way. While in Manchester he was still fond of country walks. The only other recreation he had was a game of bowls with some friends every Thursday afternoon at the "Dog and Partridge," some three miles distant from the centre of Manchester. But despite all his incessant toil and hurrying of meals, Dalton kept good health, until he had a slight paralytic stroke at the age of seventy-one. However, he recovered very quickly, and although he had a second slight stroke the following year, he lived on and was able to go about for another seven years. Indeed, he was going about as usual up to the very last, but on coming in one evening his servant noticed that his hand trembled, more than he had ever seen it before, when making an entry in his meteorological book. He passed away the following morning, "imperceptibly as an infant sinking into sleep."
And so the old Quaker of seventy-eight years was laid to rest. The people of Manchester asked that the funeral might be a public one, and we have evidence of the high esteem in which Dalton was held in the fact that no less than forty thousand people visited the darkened Town Hall where his remains were placed prior to the funeral. His life-long friend, Miss Johns, said, "His reverence for the great Author of all things was deep and sincere, as also for the Scriptures."
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